Saratoga Springs Planning Board expected to take up three proposals Wednesday evening

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- The Planning Board is set to review plans for a new building on Church Street while also taking another look at two development projects that have already been before the Planning Board.

All three proposals combine residential with commercial features, but only one is entirely new.

Hidden Fountain Commons is a three-story mixed-use building proposed for the corner of Church and Lawrence streets. It would be built next to Hidden Gardens Extraordinary Floral Design and Antiques, a business that relocated from behind City Hall on Maple Avenue last year.

Hidden Gardens will remain in its current structure on Lawrence Street, City Planner Kate Maynard said Tuesday. Meanwhile, the mixed-use building would feature retail and commercial shops on the ground floor, office space on the second floor and some residential space on the third floor.

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The Planning Board is also reviewing some of the proposal for a project that was already approved, but has since been revised.

The Lexington Club at 52 Marion Ave. has been fenced off and dormant for more than five years after construction was started and stopped on the condominiums, townhouses, a hotel, restaurant, banquet hall, spa, retail space and parking garage that were supposed to be located there.

Last month, the Planning Board heard from developers who had re-imagined the project as a mixed-use development focused on commercial space featuring a 20,000-square-foot Fresh Market, a North Carolina-based specialty grocery store that sells high-quality, perishable groceries.

The Planning Board will evaluate the uses that are being proposed in the three-building complex during a public hearing on its special- use permit. If the proposed uses are approved, developers will still need to return to the Planning Board for site plan approval.

Finally, the Planning Board will be talking to developers of Washington Commons, a mixed-use development on the corner of Washington Street and Central Avenue that has not changed.

The project was previously approved in July 2011, but because its developers have not started work on the site, that approval needs to be renewed.

"This is not a new application," Planning Board Chairman Clifford Van Wagner said at the Tuesday night pre-agenda meeting. "The applicant simply forgot to renew it. Nothing has changed."

In 2011, it was approved as two 7,500 square-foot buildings with retail and commercial space on the first floor and four residential units on each of the second floors.

The two buildings, which were accepted in 2011, have a shared courtyard between them and are proposed with sidewalks that will link the residential neighborhood on Central Avenue with existing sidewalks on Washington Street.